|
Back to Index
Factbox:
AIDS in Africa
Reuters
June 04, 2007
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L04675586.htm
The third South
African AIDS Conference begins on Tuesday. Here are some key details
about AIDS in southern Africa:
AIDS
- The global picture
Around 39.5
million people are living with HIV worldwide, 2.6 million more than
in 2004, and the number of new infections reached 4.3 million in
2006, according to UNAIDS.
AIDS
in Africa
--Two thirds
of those infected -- 24.7 million people -- live in sub-Saharan
Africa, which also accounts for almost 75 percent of deaths -- 2.1
million out of the global toll of 2.9 million.
--An estimated
2.8 million adults and children became infected with HIV in 2006,
more than in all other regions of the world combined. The 2.1 million
AIDS deaths in sub-Saharan Africa represented 72 percent of global
AIDS deaths. Across this region, women bear a disproportionate part
of the AIDS burden.
Southern
Africa
-- Southern
Africa remains the epicentre of the global HIV epidemic: 32 percent
of people with HIV globally live in this subregion and 34 percent
of AIDS deaths globally occur there.
-- The only
evidence of declining national adult HIV prevalence in southern
Africa comes from Zimbabwe, where both HIV prevalence and incidence
have fallen. Nevertheless, approximately one in five adults in Zimbabwe
is living with HIV, one of the worst HIV epidemics in the world.
South
Africa
-- Some 5.5
million people, (or about 12 percent of the 47 million population)
including 240,000 children younger than 15 years, were living with
HIV in 2005. UNAIDS said in its December 2006 report that HIV prevalence
has not yet reached a plateau.
-- South Africa's
epidemic has now reached the stage where increasing numbers of people
are dying of AIDS. The latest official mortality data show total
deaths (from all causes) in South Africa increased by 79 percent
from 1997 to 2004 - from 316,505 to 567,488. A large proportion
of the rising trend in death rates is attributable to the AIDS epidemic
and the increasing death toll has driven average life expectancy
below 50 years in three provinces, Eastern Cape, Free State and
KwaZulu-Natal.
-- In South
Africa, death rates from natural causes for women aged 25-34 years
increased five-fold between 1997 and 2004, and for males aged 30-44
it more than doubled.
AIDS
Treatment
-- A critical
shortage of healthcare workers and restrictions on prescribing life-saving
drugs is crippling the war on HIV/AIDS in southern Africa according
to a very recent report by medical charity Medicins Sans Frontieres
(MSF).
-- An estimated
1 million people with HIV in South Africa, Mozambique, Malawi and
Lesotho -- four of the countries hardest hit by HIV/AIDS -- require
but do not have access to the anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) treatment.
-- In South
Africa some 700,000 needy HIV patients are going without the treatment.
The crisis is especially bad in rural areas where clinics are saturated
with a backlog of cases.
Sources: Reuters/UNAIDS/http://www.unaids.org/MSF/
Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.
TOP
|
